Roy was made a lieutenant in the state militia by his brother and got a job tending bar at a place called the Headquarters. He injured a man in a duel in 1852 and was arrested. He escaped, but his brother was killed a few months later after getting stuck on the pointy end of a romantic triangle. Roy moved back to New Mexico and worked as a bartender for his other brother, who was both a sheriff and a saloonkeeper, which seems like a nice racket.

After a few years slinging booze and smuggling guns during the Civil War, Roy married a Mexican teenager and moved to San Antonio. He supported his wife and five children by selling stolen firewood and watered-down milk.

In 1882, fleeing both the law and his wife, Bean moved to tiny Vinegaroon, Texas, to run a makeshift saloon for railroad workers. The desert heat apparently affected the minds of the local county commissioners, because they appointed Bean as the Justice of the Peace of Pecos County. Bean, not drunk enough to miss the obvious opportunity thrown at his feet, eagerly accepted the position and moved a few miles north to a tent city called Langtry. The town had been named for a railroad boss, but Bean liked the name because he was obsessed with a British actress named Lillie Langtry. He built a saloon which he named the Jersey Lilly -- Lillie Langtry's nickname. The Jersey Lilly pulled triple-duty -- Bean's saloon, his home, and his courthouse.

Bean died in his sleep in 1903 after a drinking binge in Del Rio. Though he'd never met Lillie Langtry, they'd carried on regular correspondence over the years, and she is said to have sent him a pair of pistols as a gift. Ten months after his death, Lillie finally visited Bean's hometown to listen to townspeople tell stories about her biggest fan.